YouTube makes smoking, drinking ‘glamorous’
WHILE the advertising of cigarettes is banned and there are plans to ban alcohol advertisements, a new research study found that just by watching music videos on YouTube, teenagers specifically, were exposed to millions of images showing drinking and smoking in a glamorous light.
A study published last month in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, researchers found teenagers in the United Kingdom were heavily exposed to alcohol and tobacco content in YouTube music videos.
Those most exposed were children between the ages of 13 and 15, and girls were more exposed than boys.
The researchers said that relatively little attention had been paid to YouTube content, despite the fact that some music videos contained extensive alcohol and tobacco content, which was often depicted in a positive light, and that these videos tended to be most popular with younger audiences.
To do the study they used the results of two nationally representative online surveys of British adults and teens to calculate viewing figures for the 32 most popular music videos of top 40 chart songs in the UK.
Researchers calculated the videos delivered a total of 1 006 million impressions of alcohol and 203 million of tobacco to the British population during the period between release of the video and the point of the survey.
Most of this content was delivered to 25 to 34 year olds, but levels of individual exposure were almost four times higher among teens, the figures indicated.
Trumpets by Jason Derulo, and Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke delivered some of the highest number of tobacco impressions, while Timber by Pitbull, and Drunk in Love by Beyoncé, delivered the most alcohol content.
If these levels of exposure were typical, then in one year, music videos would be expected to deliver over four billion impressions of alcohol, and nearly one billion of tobacco in Britain alone, researchers calculated.
The UK have similar restrictions on cigarette advertising to South Africa. No regulations apply to digital music videos.
Mgwebi Msiya from the Eastern Cape Liquor Board said they believed there were a host of circumstances that influenced teenagers to experiment with alcohol.
“In this province we found that the most influential factor was the peer pressure and community. But scenes on television and magazines definitely have the potential to influence teenagers.
“Limiting these scenes showing people drinking cannot eradicate underage drinking on its own. There are other factors that should be considered, such as the role of parents [who sometimes drink in front of their teenagers] peer pressure, and some community members [who also abuse alcohol in front of teenagers], rigorous education of liquor traders into the significance of not selling alcohol to children, and the mushrooming of illegal taverns that are not regulated and sell alcohol to teenagers with impunity,” Msiya said.
